


The Frozen

by antivalentine



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Zombies, Episode: s02e06 Reset, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-26
Updated: 2008-03-26
Packaged: 2019-02-11 23:51:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12946749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antivalentine/pseuds/antivalentine
Summary: A grieving Tosh is reborn through the healing power of getting drunk and shagging a girl! (I suck at summaries about as much as I suck at plots). Spoilers for Reset.





	The Frozen

It's a bad thought, a selfish thought, but it occurs to her anyway as Dr Martha Jones slices his chest open with her smooth, cold blade -- another wound, another violation -- it should be him carrying out the autopsy. If somebody had to be on that table, why him and not you?  
  
She wants to stay and watch. Weird, maybe, a little ghoulish. But more honest than leaving. She wants to stay to the bitter end. If it takes his entrails laid out on a metal tray in front of her, if it takes his deflated lungs to convince her he's not breathing anymore, so be it. She wants to see his heart. To check he had one. To know whether the bullet reached it. It's important to establish exactly what happened, precisely how they reached this point.  
  
Better to leave no place for fantasy to hide.  
  
Nonetheless, deep down she is relieved when approximately five seconds after the first incision Gwen runs out of the room and she needs to check she's OK, needs to hold her hair like a drunken girlfriend as she pukes. Part of her is standing apart from them, in her mind, watching Gwen, watching herself, watching Martha. She wants to be the one going to pieces and being looked after. She also wants to be the one coolly and professionally getting on with what has to be done. But actually she's just standing there, the tears rolling down her face in a perfectly healthy fashion.  
  
And so she cherishes the bad thought, the selfish thought, for its unreasonableness, its proof that she's grieving.  
  
I want someone to blame, she tells the mirror, quite matter-of-factly. Her eyes are proportionately red.  
  
***  
  
_Oh you boys, you boys. You need to stop throwing yourselves in front of bullets. We don't need martyrs. We need doctors._  
  
Martha has never told Tom what he did on the last day of the year that never happened. It puts pressure on a person, informing them that they'd die for you. She hugs it to herself, another secret, a form of proof that she made the right choice. It's something to hold onto when the pressures of work and absence and family start bearing down on them and she wonders whether it's even worth trying, whether it's selfish to keep him from an ordinary life without her and her crazy baggage.  
  
It's not safe, this life she's chosen. Owen saved it today. He's a doctor, that's his job. Every death feels like a failure, even when there's nothing you could have done. Especially when there's nothing you could have done.  
  
'I'm sorry,' she whispers. She wipes her eyes and begins to close.  
  
***  
  
Toshiko shakes her head. 'It's just so banal. We deal with aliens every day. He could have inhaled one of those mayflies, or had his head ripped off by a Weevil, but this... Human enemy, human weapon. Nothing exotic about it.'  
  
'Well, death _is_ banal,' says Gwen. 'It's the most ordinary thing in the world.'  
  
They look down at the body on the slab. The second wound has been neatly stitched up, the first remains. His face is bloodless, waxen. Jack wants him in the freezer. They can't face the incinerator yet.  
  
'What about his family?' says Martha.  
  
'They weren't close' says Gwen.  
  
'They didn't speak,' adds Toshiko quietly. 'At all. It's hard in this job, having people outside. There's so much you can't tell them. Most of the time it's easier not to communicate at all.'  
  
I never told him, she thinks. And now it's too late.  
  
At the last moment, before they slide him away into the cold, into the deep freeze, she grabs his hair and tells the unhearing ear 'I love you.' But it's more for form's sake than anything else. It's only because there'll be an extra layer of regret if she doesn't. She doesn't for a second think it counts.  
  
***  
  
They need a medic, it makes sense for her to stay.  
  
'Temporarily.' she tells Jack. 'You need to find someone else within three months, tops. I'm not moving away from my family or my friends.'  
  
'Or Tom.' He raises an eyebrow.  
  
She looks down at the desk. 'Or Tom, yes.'  
  
Jack chuckles. 'You're adorable when you're embarrassed.'  
  
'It's still early days, but we're happy. I won't jeopardise that.'  
  
'Message received and understood.'  
  
'Three months, Jack. No more.'  
  
***  
  
The hole in Toshiko's life is smaller than she would have imagined. Of course she'd imagined him dead. It was insurance against it really happening. And maybe, just a tiny bit of wishful thinking. How it would enable her to tell the truth, finally. Be open, finally.  
  
She hadn't anticipated how pointless it would be to tell the truth to someone who wasn't there.  
  
She still gets up in the morning. She still washes her hair. She still gets a little flutter of excitement when she cracks a particularly intransigent network, she still gets headaches when there's a thunderstorm coming. She still sees the gulls swooping over the bay, the crocodiles of small children on school trips, the light shining through the carved letters of the armadillo, all the things she works to save.  
  
Sometimes she thinks: of course, he was never really there anyway. Not for me. For me he was always dead, cold, locked in the deep freeze. Nothing's changed, not really.  
  
Except that there is Martha.  
  
***  
  
Martha thinks she knows what it is. She recognises it wearily from school, from college, from being a sister. That edge. Which isn't jealousy, exactly, because jealousy is about you having something they don't have. What happens between clever girls is more complicated than jealousy, more subtle than rivalry, and more to do with themselves than each other.  
  
Whatever it is, she has no patience with it nowadays.  
  
Smilingly, she refuses Jack's offer of a place to stay, tempting though it is. She returns every night to the bland security of her hotel room to chat to those at home. Martha is pretty big on work/life balance since she walked out on the Doctor. What he did wasn't really work, but it wasn't really life, either. If she had thousands of years to live she'd stop for a few hundred in the same place; build cities, raise families, cure cancers. But he's always running away. It gets exhausting. After that year of wandering, all she wanted to do was stay where she was wanted and needed, and all he wanted to do, still, was run.  
  
Occasionally as she turns into Bute Place she wonders whether she'll see that familiar blue box, her old home, her old friend, refuelling at the Rift. Like taking her own pulse, she checks whether she'd be happy. On the whole, she thinks, not. It's not because it's still raw. It's not even because it's still healing. She just knows better than to go picking at scar tissue.  
  
She wouldn't go back if he asked her. She'd tell him to take someone else, someone who actually needed to escape from their life. She'd tell him to take Toshiko.  
  
Which wouldn't be selfless. Which would be, at least in part, to free her from having to deal with the girl. But it's also because something about her reminds her of herself, back when she ran away with the Doctor. It's not just the cleverness, or the chippiness, or the gutsiness. It's the loneliness. That precious solitude. And the way she'll fall in love with the frozen to preserve it.  
  
***  
  
Tosh's regretting that declaration of love, now, the way she split her heart open for all of them to see. She hates the way that Ianto, still, two months down the line, asks her if she's all right -- 'Fine,' she says, not in that false-chirpy way which advertises you're not, but merely exasperated.  
  
She hates the way that Gwen continually stops herself from talking about Rhys, and Martha from mentioning Tom. Yes, OK, she thinks, so I'm the only single one here, but that's fine, it was always fine, do they think I'm Bridget fucking Jones and it's actually an issue?  
  
She hates the way that Jack haunts the freezers every spare moment, like he's tortured by guilt or something. It's just self-indulgent. Like telling his dead body she loved it was self-indulgent. Like loving him in the first place was.  
  
Most of all, she hates him lying there in the cold, the meaningless empty body keeping its secrets; unhearing, unseeing, unbreathing.  
  
Every day she comes into work and there is Martha in his place, the changeling. What happens when she leaves? Will his place be empty? What will there be left to hate?  
  
***  
  
Short of sleep, hormonal, aware that her secondment from UNIT is due to end this week and Jack has shown no sign of even looking for a replacement, Martha snaps at Tosh: 'I wish you'd just come out and say what you don't like about me.'  
  
'I don't have a problem with you.' says Tosh defensively.  
  
'Right. Whatever.' It doesn't matter, she's leaving. Why bother to pursue it?  
  
'We only work together' says Tosh. 'Temporarily, at that. We don't have to be friends.'  
  
'Don't you think it would be easier if we were?'  
  
'No' says Tosh. She looks surprised by her own bluntness.  
  
'Have it your way' shrugs Martha, returning to the foul-smelling chunk of organic matter she is trying to classify.  
  
Tosh flings herself into a chair next to Ianto's desk, almost spilling his coffee. He looks at her curiously.  
  
' _What_?'  
  
'Nothing' says Ianto quickly, and resumes typing with self-conscious speed.  
  
***  
  
'I'm sorry about earlier,' says Martha.  
  
'No, I'm sorry. I was rude to you.'  
  
'Look, do you want to go for a drink after work? I'm not trying to be your best friend or anything, I promise. I just think it'd be a good idea to clear the air. On neutral territory.'  
  
Tosh shrugs. 'OK, yeah. That'll be nice.'  
  
It doesn't matter, she's leaving. In the eternal scheme of things, one drink is not going to make any difference at all.  
  
***  
  
Martha, as was to be expected, proves a demon at pool. 'Well, I was a student for a long time,' she explains, slightly embarrassed as she clears the table for the second time. Tosh finishes her beer. 'Another one?'  
  
'Please.' She's been so boringly good and professional all her time in Cardiff she had almost forgotten the usefulness of alcohol as social lubricant. Why didn't they do this earlier? Beer makes everything better.  
  
So Martha expounds her theory on what clever girls do that isn't exactly jealousy, and Tosh refutes this with grief and changelinghood, and Martha is so disgusted with herself for not coming up with the obvious explanation -- she hates me for replacing Owen -- that she is moved to buy them shots to make up for their stupidity. Somewhere around this point, Tosh finds herself talking about Tommy.  
  
'It was a crush that got put on fast forward. You see him once a year. He's sweet and he's goodlooking and he _likes_ you. OK, so that's because I was literally the only woman he knew...'  
  
'Why are you so hard on yourself? You're an attractive woman.'  
  
'Oh, don't say that.'  
  
'But you are.'  
  
'But, anyway, everything escalated because time was limited, everything got intensified, and when it was over and it was gone it was like... some kind of vivid dream. Like it all happened too quickly to register properly.'  
  
'Riley' says Martha, with a faraway look. 'I was stuck on a spaceship with Riley once, falling into a black hole. But I only kissed him when I knew I was never going to see him again. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have bothered.'  
  
'I only told Owen because it was too late.' Tosh downs her vodka.  
  
'I liked Owen' Martha muses. 'He had that kind of puppyish, bounding around trying to impress people thing about him...'  
  
'That was because you were new and he was flirting with you.'  
  
'I never encouraged him.'  
  
'He didn't need encouraging. Not with other people.'  
  
'Maybe he just didn't want to get involved with someone he worked with...'  
  
'Or maybe he just didn't fancy me. Anything else in a skirt was pretty much fair game. No, actually, anything with a pulse. Possibly some things without a pulse. Just not me.'  
  
'He made you feel invisible.'  
  
'Oh, I've always been invisible. I'm used to it.'  
  
'It's safer.' agrees Martha. 'Keeping your head down, sailing under the radar...'  
  
'Most people, I don't _want_ them to see me. But you can't switch it on just for one person.'  
  
'I think you can.' says Martha quietly.  
  
'What, there's someone for everyone? OK, what if there is. What if there is, and it was Owen, and he's dead. Or what if it was Tommy, and he's dead. It's OK for you, you've found yours...'  
  
'The Doctor.' says Martha. 'If there was The One, it was the Doctor. He was the one who changed my life, showed me the universe, proved to me what I could do. But he didn't see me either. I don't think I was blonde enough, or alien enough, or something. And the awful thing was, I went along with that. It was safer. I mean, yeah, it hurts, but it hurts the way you expect it to hurt.'  
  
'What about your boyfriend? Don't you love him?'  
  
'I'm still figuring out how to do love that isn't unrequited. It's a scary thing. But he doesn't make me feel that I'm not good enough for him. Plus, he's ever so pretty.'  
  
'To prettiness!' Tosh raises her glass, unsteadily. They clink. They giggle, salaciously, flying away from the dark waters of bitterness and jealousy and worthlessness as fast as the wings of vodka can take them.  
  
***  
  
Come chucking out time, Tosh's flat is a more cost-effective option than the minibar in Martha's room. It is not, of course, a more sensible option than going their separate ways and trying to get a good night's sleep, but they've acquired a taste for confession. Tosh spills her discovery that the sexual techniques of men in the 1910s weren't so very different from modern ones... 'unless,' she muses, 'some other member of staff took it upon themselves to teach him...'  
  
'Jack?' suggests Martha, and they nearly piss themselves laughing before dismissing the possibility on the grounds that said techniques weren't _that_ modern. Or innovative. Or avant-garde.  
  
'So you and Jack, you've really never...?'  
  
'No! We sort of had other things on our minds.'  
  
'Jack had something else on his mind? Oh please.'  
  
'We were on the run! The world was in danger and stuff. We didn't have a lot of spare time on our hands.'  
  
'The world is _always_ in danger. It doesn't normally stop him.'  
  
'So you and Jack, have you...?'  
  
Tosh merely sips her beer. 'Not telling.'  
  
'Oh, not fair. You have, haven't you? Otherwise you'd say.'  
  
'Or, I just might not want the stigma of being the only person in the office Jack _hasn't_ shagged.'  
  
'There's me. There's Gwen.'  
  
'You, I don't believe. Gwen, I _definitely_ don't believe.'  
  
'She loves Rhys.'  
  
'Yeah, like I loved Owen. As if who you love had a direct corren.. try again, _correlation_ with who you sleep with.'  
  
Martha puts the bottle down, stands up to find the room shifting around her. 'I should go. Work tomorrow.'  
  
'Martha?'  
  
'Yeah?'  
  
'I'm sorry I was such a bitch to you.'  
  
'Oh, forget it. You weren't that bad.'  
  
Tosh gets up to see her to the door, while Martha casts around for her coat. They spot it at the same moment, reach for it at the same moment. Martha's face is so close, her expression of soft relief so beautiful, that Tosh doesn't have time to think before she kisses her.  
  
***  
  
Martha Jones has met Shakespeare, fallen in love with a nine-hundred-year-old alien and saved the world. Nothing really surprises her anymore.  
  
This, however, is about as close as it gets.  
  
'I'm sorry' says Tosh, breathless, jumping back as if she's had an electric shock.  
  
'God! Don't be' says Martha, grabbing her face and kissing her right back.  
  
***  
  
It's clumsy, unaccustomed, drunken, but one thing it isn't is unfocused. Or soft. Or gentle, or any of those other cliches Martha's heard from bi-curious acquaintances. It has no business being any of those things. They're not in love, they're not _experimenting_ , they are merely hungry. The body wants what the body wants, and right now the body wants another body.  
  
They scramble under the bedclothes, play-fighting almost, who gets to go down first, and Martha wins. She has seen so many worlds, all in their way miraculous, and even though she hasn't exactly been here before it's not like she doesn't know her way around. She traces the routes with her fingers, with her tongue, but unlike a place Tosh moves, she shifts beneath her touch, she rises to meet her and falls away unexpectedly, she clasps and she strokes and she pinches and she won't be caught, she won't stay still, but traces the routes with her fingers, with her tongue.  
  
***  
  
Back in her hotel room, Martha fishes her phone out of her coat pocket to check the time and there's an unread message. Tom's goodnight text. How did she not hear it beep?  
  
She snaps the phone shut and throws it down on the bed. Already her throat is dry, already her head is beginning to pound.  
  
I never thought I was that sort of girl, she thinks. The sort of girl who cheats on her lovely boyfriend. I'm supposed to be the good one, the brave one, the one who always does what's right.  
  
Except it doesn't feel wrong. It felt good when she was doing it and it doesn't feel bad now.  
  
It's not being unfaithful, she tells herself. It's being Torchwood.  
  
If she stays any longer she'll go native. She'll give into the temptation to stay at Jack's, the prettiness of Ianto will begin to gnaw away at her goodness, and Tosh...  
  
Tosh only seduced her because it was safe. Tosh only seduced her because she was leaving. And she only seduced Tosh because she knew she was going home.  
  
***  
  
'Do you have anyone else lined up?'  
  
Jack shrugs. 'I'm waiting for fate to throw someone in my path. The universe will provide.'  
  
'It always does' observes Ianto.  
  
'Stay' says Jack.  
  
Martha shakes her head. 'I can't.'  
  
And Tosh is in the doorway, listening. When Martha sees her she is overcome with dread, for a moment -- does it look like I'm running away, does she think I regret it, does she think I'm deserting her, am I breaking her heart?  
  
But their eyes meet, and Tosh nods, ever so slightly, the ghost of a nod, to say it's OK.  
  
***  
  
Tosh sleeps well that night. No angst, no regrets, no complications. It's refreshing.  
  
The next day she goes to work and there is no Martha. The air is lighter, less charged. It is spring, suddenly, or something like it, daffs springing up in their planters by the roadside.  
  
She goes, for the first time since they put him there, down to the freezers, the classified bodies in their filing cabinets. Jack's there, as she knew he would be. He glances at her, stricken, the weight of secrets on his shoulders.  
  
'I could have brought him back. There's another glove. Only for a few moments but enough to say goodbye...'  
  
'Those things are too dangerous for anyone to mess with.' says Tosh calmly. 'We all know that. You couldn't have brought him back.'  
  
'No. I know. But we could have said goodbye.'  
  
'We've said goodbye.' She places her hand on his arm. 'Come on, Jack. It's time.'  
  
She doesn't go to pieces as they pull the frozen face into the open, as they heft the heavy, heavy body onto the gurney, her fingers numb with cold. She is too aware of her own movements, her own warmth, her own life. So he'll burn, he'll thaw, he'll melt, he'll evaporate.  
  
She thinks of phoenixes. She wonders what the universe will provide.


End file.
